Since its founding Shutterstock has acquired a handful of other companies, starting with Bigstock in 2009[12] and followed by digital asset management software provider Webdam in 2014.[13] After acquiring Rex Features and PremiumBeat in 2015,[14][15] Shutterstock signed a partnership agreement with the Associated Press[7] and most recently acquired Flashstock in 2017. It also has licensing deals with companies such as Penske Media Corporation.[16] The company had over 100,000 contributors as of March 2016,[7] with an "active customer base of 1.4 million people in 150 countries."[17]

Shutterstock was founded in 2003 by American entrepreneur and computer programmer Jon Oringer.[18] Creating his own online marketplace,[4] Oringer initially uploaded 30,000 of his own stock photos and made them available via subscription,[4] with unlimited downloads and a monthly starting fee of US$49.[4] When demand exceeded his photo supply,[4] he became an agent[19] and began hiring additional contributors.[4] Helping pioneer the subscription based microstock photography business model,[19] Shutterstock claimed that it was the "largest subscription-based stock photo agency in the world" as of 2006, with 570,000 images in its collection.[20] Shutterstock branched into film in 2006 with the launch of Shutterstock Footage,[20] and by 2007, the company had 1.8 million photos.[8]Insight Venture Partners invested in the company that year.[4] Shutterstock expanded beyond subscriptions into a la carte pricing in August 2008, with its "On Demand" service removing daily download limits.[9]

On September 23, 2009, Shutterstock announced that it had purchased Bigstock, a rival credit-based microstock photography agency.[12]Fast Company argued the deal put "Shutterstock on a competitive playing field with Getty, whose iStockPhoto is also credit-based."[21] Shutterstock's CEO Jon Oringer stated the addition would "enable Shutterstock to better satisfy the diverse payment preferences of stock photo buyers worldwide."[12] Shutterstock had 11 million royalty-free stock images by early 2010.[22] In February 2011, Shutterstock announced a two-year partnership with the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) to provide creative inspiration to its members.[23] Claiming it licensed more images than "any other brand worldwide" in 2011,[23] that November Shutterstock debuted Shutterstock for iPad, which it provided for free.[24]

With 200 million licensed image downloads as of February 2012,[25] by April 2012 the company had 18 million royalty-free stock images,[22] which grew to 19 million the following month.[26] Shutterstock Images LLC announced the Shutterstock Instant tool in May 2012, which displayed images in an interlocking mosaic to increase viewing speed.[27] Shutterstock Instant was launched under the auspices of the newly formed Shutterstock Labs, which develops tools and interfaces for Shutterstock, among other projects.[27][28] Also in May 2012, Shutterstock filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, which it completed on October 17, 2012 under the ticker SSTK.[10][11] In November 2012, Shutterstock debuted a universal iOS application meant for iPhone and iPad, among other devices.[29]

Shutterstock, Inc. announced Spectrum, a new "image discovery tool," in March 2013.[28] At the time, Shutterstock had 24 million licensable photos, vectors and illustrations in its portfolio.[28] In August 2013, Shutterstock and Facebook announced a partnership to integrate Shutterstock's library within Facebook's Ad Creator, allowing advertisers to select from Shutterstock's images when creating ads.[30] At the time, Shutterstock was available in 20 languages including Thai, Korean, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.[31]

In September 2013, Shutterstock launched Offset, marketplace prioritizing high end curated photos from established artists.[32] A few months later, it launched its first Android app.[33] In October 2013, Shutterstock opened offices in Berlin, Germany.[34] At the time, Shutterstock stated it served 750,000 customers, with 30 percent of those customers in Europe.[34] Shutterstock's shares had reached a $2.5 billion market value by the fall of 2013,[4] while revenue for 2013 was US$235 million.[35]

In March 2014, Shutterstock acquired Webdam, a provider of online digital asset management software.[13] Also in March 2014, Shutterstock relocated its headquarters to the Empire State Building.[36] In May 2014, Shutterstock and Salesforce partnered to integrate Shutterstock's image library into Salesforce's Social Studio.[37] Shutterstock debuted its Palette tool in July 2014, a "multi-color image discovery tool."[38] Shutterstock announced it had surpassed 2 million video clips on September 2, 2014.[39] Shortly afterwards it revealed a new app meant to help contributors with uploading and categorizing photos.[40] Shutterstock's revenue was $328 million in 2014, an increase of 39% from 2013.[18] In 2014, Shutterstock paid "over $83 million to its roughly 80,000 contributors."[18]

In January 2015, Shutterstock acquired both Rex Features, Europe's largest independent photo press agency, and PremiumBeat, a stock music and sound effects service.[14] The Rex acquisition was estimated at $33 million,[41] while PremiumBeat was purchased for $32 million.[14]Penske Media Corporation formed a partnership with Shutterstock in June 2015 to create and license entertainment and fashion images. According to the terms of the deal, by 2016 Shutterstock would have an exclusive right and license to PMC's archive,[16] which included magazines such as Variety, Women's Wear Daily,[41] and Deadline.[18]Crain's wrote that with the partnership, "Shutterstock, a provider of stock imagery and music tracks, is stepping into the world of red carpets and fashion runways—and taking a key provider of fashion and entertainment photos and video away from archrival Getty Images."[41]. The company also acquired BEImages, another largest independent photo press agency.

By March 2016, the company had "over 100,000 contributors," with around 70 million images and 4 million video clips available for licensing and sale.[7] That month Shutterstock announced it would be distributing material from the Associated Press in the United States, with the deal to last 3 years and cover 30 million photos and around 2 million videos. The photos were expected to go live in April.[7] According to Entrepreneur, Shutterstock also had an "active customer base of 1.4 million people in 150 countries."[17]

In February 2018, Shutterstock invested $15 million into China based ZCool.[45] This major strategic commitment builds on the successful operational relationship Shutterstock and ZCool have had since 2014 when ZCool first became the exclusive distributor of Shutterstock creative content in China.[45] Webdam, which Shutterstock itself acquired back in 2014, was sold to Amsterdam based Bynder for $49.1 million to move Shutterstock's strategy away from digital asset management.[46]

In May 2018, IBM's Watson Content Hub officially announced its partnership with Shutterstock which it was available in July, 2018.[47] The Watson Content Hub is a content management system (CMS) that allows marketers to create content using the IBM Watson AI search tool.[48] According to Richard Hearn, chief revenue officer, "Now customers can use AI to quickly sift through Shutterstock’s library, which includes millions of professional quality content, and create and launch campaigns that resonate with their target audiences and move them to take action."[47]

After its founding in 2003 with CEO Jon Oringer as the sole employee, by 2007 Shutterstock had grown to 30 people. In 2010 Oringer hired Thilo Semmelbauer as COO, who had previously worked with TheLadders.com and Weight Watchers.[4] With 295 employees as of October 2013,[4] that had grown to 700 employees as of 2016.[2] In 2014, Fast Company published an article featuring Shutterstock as an example of a successful "intrapreneur"-reliant company, touting the company's "hackathons" for fostering staff creativity. Explains Fast Company, "the most obvious benefit of intrapreneurship is the ability to pursue more opportunities, allowing Shutterstock to test boundaries and experiment with offshoot products that can keep their core consumer base from turning to a competitor for their needs."[49]

Shutterstock licenses media for online download on behalf of photographers, designers, illustrators, videographers and musicians,[4] maintaining a library of almost 200 million royalty-freestock photos, vector graphics, and illustrations.[50] Shutterstock also has 10 million video clips and music clips in its portfolio.[39] While Shutterstock currently has several payment models, The Atlantic wrote in 2012 that Shutterstock "pioneered the subscription approach to stock photo sales, allowing customers to download images in bulk rather than à la carte."[26]The Atlantic further wrote that Shutterstock is "a web community in the manner of a Facebook or a Twitter or a Pinterest, with its value relying almost entirely on the enthusiasms of its contributors."[26]

"Shutterstock is e-commerce with a twist, and its success depends on its contributors' ability to predict, and then provide, products that its subscribers will want to buy."

With potential contributors able to apply to the site for free,[18] Shutterstock has a team of reviewers "charged with ensuring editorial consistency and quality."[26] As of 2016, if one of ten of a photographer's pictures are accepted, then they become a Shutterstock contributor.[51] As of 2011, only around 20 percent of applicants were approved, and "less than 60 percent of all the images uploaded by those approved contributors were ultimately put up on the site."[26] Once approved, contributors can begin uploading their work through the website. They supply keywords, categorize the images, and submit them to the "inspection queue", where images are examined for quality, usefulness and copyright and trademark laws. Each time an image is downloaded, the photographer receives a flat rate.[8][52][53] Explains VICE, "photographers retain copyright over their images, but Shutterstock is given full permission to market, display, and license the image to the customers on their site without final approval from the photographer."[18] As of March 2015, contributors added around 50,000 new images daily, and Shutterstock had paid around $250 million to contributors since its founding. In 2014, it paid $80 million to contributors.[50]

Shutterstock began selling stock video in February 2006. Shutterstock Footage operates similarly to their image library, offering video clips by subscription or on a per-clip basis.[20] As of 2014, Shutterstock Footage contained around 2 million royalty-free video clips.[39] Shutterstock Music debuted later, with new content submittable by contributors.[54]

Shutterstock for iPad was launched in November 2011,[24] and in May 2012 the app received a Webby Award for People's Voice in the tablet app category for utilities and services.[55] Shutterstock for iPad was followed in 2012 by a universal iOS app,[29] which by 2013 had been downloaded 650,000 times. The iOS app originally lacked the ability to download images, with that functionality added later.[33] The universal iOS app also included new features for Shutterstock, including the ability to filter image searches by color.[29] Shutterstock debuted an Android App in 2013,[33] and in September 2014, Shutterstock launched an app dedicated to its contributors, both available for iOS and Android. The app allows contributors to upload, keyword and categorize new images.[40]

In 2012, Shutterstock launched Shutterstock Labs, a lab for "exploratory tools and products."[28] In May 2012, Shutterstock Images LLC announced the Shutterstock Instant tool, which according to the company was inspired by Shutterstock for iPad. The interface displays images in an interlocking mosaic view, allowing users to view more photos in less time.[27] Shutterstock Instant was made available on the Shutterstock Labs website.[27][28] The prototype for the search tool Spectrum was launched on March 21, 2013. With development in-house by Shutterstock Labs, the tool "indexes hexagram data to yield search results by color."[28] In July 2014, Shutterstock launched Palette, which allows users to add colors to the terms of the search, in addition to keywords.[38]

Shutterstock has developed a number of tools utilizing a "convolutional neural network" that it created[17] to help with reverse image search technology.[56] The network is "essentially a computer system that is trained to recognize images – there are millions of specific items such as cats, bicycles, the night sky – and pull up the most relevant photos."[17] The network was dubbed computer vision by Shutterstock, and it "breaks down the key components of a photo numerically, drawing from its pixel data instead of metadata that is pulled from those tags and keywords."[17]

So a lot of image databases fill in those gaps with user behavior. If people searching the words 'bike' and 'fence' download a particular image more often, that one probably contains those two things in it.... Computer vision [like Shutterstock's] can change all that by eliminating the need for keywords in the first place. Using a series of algorithms, a model can progressively survey each pixel in an image to pick out different features in it—the color, the shapes, the sharpness of the angles. Each calculation is a layer of the deep learning network.

On March 10, 2016, Shutterstock debuted its Reverse Image Search tool. According to Entrepreneur, with the tool "users can upload an image, either from Shutterstock or another source, and the tool will call up images that look like and have a similar feel to the original photo."[17] The reverse image search allows users to not just search by keywords, but to also find images based on "color schemes, mood, or shapes."[56] Later that month, Shutterstock also debuted its Similar Search and Discovery tools,[17] with the "similar search" option provided beneath photos on the Shutterstock website.[56]

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